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Topic: Chicken Chatter (Read 10590 times)

Brian, I would come to your place for a visit any ol' time, just send the invite, it would be after Christmas, we'll talk.

JP, you truly have been assimilated, listen to you!!! All that chicky dicky talk, I am proud of you, friend, smiling. I knew one day that you would go to the world of the chicken, you had such a keen interest in the stories of Whoppo and me. I just knew that that would transfer from Muscovy duck to chicken, and here you are. Eating eggs that cost like in the $50 range each, smiling. So glad that your chickens are bringing you such pleasure. You ain't seen nuthin' yet. Just wait until you get some hen go broody and you got a dozen little chickies running all around. Ooops, guess you gotta get a rooster eh, smiling. Now would your friendly neighbourhood allow that? Perhaps that will have to wait until you move to the great ol' country itself. But hey, ya....by the time spring comes around, no doubt you will get a broody hen, then you will be going crazy trying to find some fertile eggs for you. I could throw you a few through cyberspace, to land right beneath that belly of your big fat ol' broody hen, smiling.....

I love to hear all of my forum friends' stories of their birds, their lives, keep 'em comin' and keep the pics coming too, too cool for school. Have that beautiful day, living and loving it, full of good health. Cindi

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There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold. The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold. The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see, what the night on the marge of Lake Lebarge, I cremated Sam McGee. Robert Service

Nothing about this coop is standard construction so try not to laugh too hard at what you see. Mind you, I've never built a shed or anything like this, but now it is stronger than Fort Knox albeit a most unorthodox design.

It looks great Jp. The thing about chicken coops is that you hardly ever see any two that are exactly alike.Everyone builds them to their own personal preferances and with whatever materials they have on hand or have access to, so don't sweat your unique design.You are a good chicken daddy.

It looks great Jp. The thing about chicken coops is that you hardly ever see any two that are exactly alike.Everyone builds them to their own personal preferances and with whatever materials they have on hand or have access to, so don't sweat your unique design.You are a good chicken daddy.

Yes and how fast the girls have grown. :'( Seems like only yesterday they were filling out with feathers. Seriously JP they look happy and your coup is very functional. You did a GOOD JOB !!.

Thanks for the feedback, I believe I've learned a good bit with this coop project. The eggs are starting to come in. The EE's eggs are so pretty its hard to eat them!

Hey Jimmy, I posed a question to all the Ms people on the BYC forum to see if your daughter is a member there but haven't seen anything come up. If she's not a member, tell her about the site: http://www.backyardchickens.com/ I thibk she's like it.

JP, well rock my socks!!! YOu are turning out to be a pretty fine woodworker, I think your coop looks simply marvelous!!! See, I can see that you took many of your pictures of your birds down at their level. It makes a really big difference when we get to see that the chickens really look like, instead of just the top of their heads and back. Good job, my friend. Your chickens look healthy and very happy, as are you too, smiling. Great, eggs!!! Yay, those Easter eggers and their muffs look so cool, also love the lacing on the SLW, beautiful birds, yay!! Have that most wonderful day, with the best of great health. Cindi

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There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold. The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold. The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see, what the night on the marge of Lake Lebarge, I cremated Sam McGee. Robert Service

How do you chicken people heat your chicken boxes? In Australia, the government has recently done away with the incandescent globe in favour of more energy efficient lights. However, these produce very little heat. A mate said that the halogen globe probably produces about half the heat of the incandescent, so it would be possible for someone to rig me up a pair of globe sockets and use two halogen globes at once. Does anyone use a better way of heating their chicken box or have any other ideas?

Lone, the adult chicken houses are not heated. They can stand very cold weather, like below freezing. If their coop is dry, draft free, then the birds do just fine. The little chickies must have warm temperatures, until they are like about 2 months old. In about 2 weeks my oldest group of chicks will be of age to go with the other chickens. I cannot offer any advice with light bulbs. We have the energy efficient bulbs too, in many places, but we can also still buy the infrared light bulbs. This is what I use for my young chickies. Have that wonderful day, life, health. Cindi

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There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold. The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold. The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see, what the night on the marge of Lake Lebarge, I cremated Sam McGee. Robert Service

I live in a tropical climate. Usually we breed from an incubator between July and November (winter to spring). When you finally get those roosters and start your breeding program, and if you decide to use an incubator, you'll find you'll need to heat their first box, maybe until some feathers start to grow. Bantams may need a bit longer than large fowl. I generally put them into a box for 3 days so I can medicate them with oxymav100, then transfer them to another box for a few weeks. I set eggs weekly so they hatch about the same time.

While I'm ranting, I'll just mention a few points about disease control, JP. I am speaking from experience. My advice is to breed your own chickens, or get them from the same breeder. If you keep spotting pretty ones here and there, your chance of bringing in a disease is increased. Some people have access to vaccinations, but usually those who live near a chicken farm and can use their facilities. For most of us, the expense and number of young chickens you need to have makes this impossible. I have heard it said that live vaccinations can bring disease into an otherwise clean area. That is how they think some diseases have actually spread. If you put vaccinated chickens too soon with unvaccinated, the virus can potentially infect them.

Anyway, we used to have a bit of marek's disease here, a nasty slow death by paralysis. It was only the odd one, but I spent a few days on the tractor and brought in clean soil to cover the entire yard, and that seems to have eliminated it, because mareks can live a long time in soil. There has been the odd bout of something like coccidiosis, but I think the oxymav treatment gets rid of that when they are hatched, so that has been no problem. But the worst disease has been ILT, a kind of herpes virus that kills about 80% straight away (the acute form), then some get the chronic form, with breathing trouble and infected eyes, then the remainder are probably carriers. The only cure is to kill all your fowls and leave the yard empty at least 80 days until the virus dies. I think I either picked it up from some chickens I bought in another town, or from taking my chooks to the shows. A few years ago, it spread through Brisbane show, and the poultry had to be quarantined. I bred a lot that year, and when they were about 3 months old, within 2 weeks most had died. They only get symptoms for 24 hours. The next year, the same thing happened. I called the DPI 2 days before christmas, and they rushed a couple of sick ones to brisbane and had them tested. This was during the avian influenza scare. They gave me the information about ILT, so I had to kill the few remaining and cleaned the coops out with lysol. The only good thing was that the disease is not carried through the eggs, so I was able to breed from a few eggs and keep the prize winning line going. Now my chooks are happy and healthy.

Not all diseases are bad. The other day, a girl brought a hen with worms in the eye. The old fellas dabbed iodine tincture in the eye, and you could see the worms die. You can often treat an infected eye the same way, but sometimes respiratory infections such as ILT actually appear as goopy eyes.

The infrared globes seem like a good idea. Can you give me more information about them please..like how many watts do you use, and where can you get them, and do they last a long time left on continuously? The incandescent ones would blow quite often from being on all the time.

Thanks for the information Lone. I will not be getting any roosters until we move (one day, who knows when) to our place in the country. Right now I'm an urban chicken keeper & roosters would certainly cause an uproar with the neighbors (worse than the bees did, lol).

A few of my chickens (I believe my two newest ones) did have what appeared to be a small case of roundworms. I treated their water with Wazine & about every 4-5 days I'll add Diatomaceous Earth to their feed. I also add D.E. to their droppings to kill everything wiggly except earthworms. Other than that my chooks (first time I've ever used that word, hee hee [for Cindi]) seem to be pretty darn healthy.

I purchased the first lot of 6 then about two weeks or so later purchased another two, from the same gentleman.

I called him immediately when I discovered my first one and a few days later when I found others in a single poop pile.

He's a great country gent who lives in the middle of nowhere with wife & kids & a bunch of chickens. It sounds like he goes through quite a lot of chickens. He said he's found just one worm & has been applying D.E. to food & dusted his coops.

Hello JP,You can't really avoid parasites like lice, fleas, mites and worms. You just have to worm every 3 months like with any pet. The stickfast fleas here are hard to treat, but there is a sheep wormer we just got called Ivomec which knocks most of them. We sometimes also spray all the coops and chooks with a cattle spray called Barricade S. Lice spread easily but they are not too bothersome. You inspect the tail end and it looks like white lumps. We sprinkle a powder called coopex around the tail and it fixes it. Of course, these things are worse with a large number of fowl. We probably have around 200 chooks here, I haven't done a count.

The other reason we don't introduce new stock here is because they do line breeding, i.e. mate the parents with the offspring to keep the good genetics going. They have had the same line of pit game here for over 60 years. a show breeder will know that introducing new genes will introduce faults you never had before. But that is for the serious breeders only. My araucanas already have lots of "faults", so I will have to breed selectively for the rest of my life! I don't think I will get to show standard with them, but I have improved them so they look better. It is very hard to get good araucanas here because people want them for the egg only and have mixed them with other breeds. Those with good ones hang on to them.